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> It seems to me that the Coinbase case just doubles down on this attitude.

It isn't just that attitude that's the problem, it's the insistence by Coinbase that they're apolitical, yet the company makes significant political contributions themselves[1].

[1] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?...

Looking through these entries, I believe these are contributions made using Coinbase, not by Coinbase. I.e: political donations processed using cryptocurrency, not ones made by the company or its employees.

Just speculating here based on the repeated small dollar amounts.

I doubt it. There are a lot of $5k+ donations, and a $21k donation. The dozens of $2k and $5k donations are mostly to Brian Forde's campaign, famous for his Bitcoin connections[1]. Upon looking at the smallest donations, the majority go to Brian Forde, too.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/bitcoin-s...

Right, so bitcoin users using a bitcoin site are making contributions to a bitcoin-friendly politician. I'm not seeing anything anomalous here.

Do you have evidence that suggests that the FEC was deceived about the source of their financial data?

They're not deceived, it just looks like a display error. If you open up an individual item, many have an "Open Image" button next to them that show the full filing document.

Here's a random example: https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?201811269133824807

Includes the individual's name & his employer, which isn't listed as Coinbase.

Salesforce doesn't get dragged into anti-tech sentiment because they build a b2b product. The Twitter activists who lead most of the anti-tech crusades don't know what CRM is or what it does because they never interact with it because they are unemployed.

The people who do use Salesforce for the most part hate it. But you'll never see widespread outrage about Salesforce because the people who use it have jobs, families, and friends that prevent them from spending all day on social media.

I think it's less that they have never heard of it and more that they are one level farther removed from being influenced by average people.

"Twitter bad. Don't use." is a much easier sell than "Salesforce bad. Other company uses Saleforce so it's transitively bad. Don't use other company."

Palantir is a b2b product.

What makes you think "twitter activists" lead most of the anti-tech crusades? If it's based on your observations of them on twitter, that probably says more about where you're looking than where they are. I don't know where anti-tech activism is centered, but twitter wouldn't be my first guess.

I doubt that anti-tech people really discern different companies. Most likely Salesforce is not consumer oriented and therefore not really a name that springs to mind when it comes to tech.

To be frank from a North Eastern admittedly suburban perspective the "local community" manages to seem to be in the wrong here and sound very entitled. Reaching out for philanthropy is well and good and a positive thing, but the hostility and demands runs afoul of "minding your own business" essentially. It is one thing if they were say polluting or being an attractor of crime would be fair enough but complaining about high paying jobs seems downright spoiled and unpleasable. Essentially if the local government can't handle the issues with an increased tax flood the problem isn't the goose that lays the golden eggs.

I grew up in SF, and I'm a tech weanie, and I gotta say: We have been terrible neighbors. We have been like the guy that bought a condo in North Beach and then sued the church for ringing their bells, but 10,000x worse. We've kind of ruined the city.

As for Marc Benioff, he's the only billionaire who seems to actually, visibly give a shit. He's Jimmy James. (Even if that fwcking tower looks alternately like a phallus or a giant middle finger. Whatever, dude's cool.)

SF politicians and the voters who keep them in office have "ruined" SF in the sense of driving up housing costs by restricting supply, and failing to build adequate transportation infrastructure expeditiously: https://www.city-journal.org/san-franciscos-municipal-budget or https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/, to cite two examples.

Any time SF wants, it can allow the supply of housing to rise to meet demand, which will drastically improve the city's culture, diversity, and affordability. SF voters don't want that, though, and they've not yet been overruled at the state level.

Let's get the diagnosis right first.

Have you read this, and, if so, what do you think of it?

https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme...

> Building enough housing to roll back prices to the "good old days" is probably not realistic, because the necessary construction rates were never achieved even when planning and zoning were considerably less restrictive than they are now. Building enough to compensate for the growing economy is a somewhat more realistic goal and would keep things from getting worse.

> In the long run, San Francisco's CPI-adjusted average income is growing by 1.72% per year, and the number of employed people is growing by 0.326% per year, which together (if you believe the first model) will raise CPI-adjusted housing costs by 3.8% per year. Therefore, if price stability is the goal, the city and its citizens should try to increase the housing supply by an average of 1.5% per year (which is about 3.75 times the general rate since 1975, and with the current inventory would mean 5700 units per year). If visual stability is the goal instead, prices will probably continue to rise uncontrollably.

I think it would only take a few years (very few, as in low single digits) of 1.5% growth in housing supply to invalidate the extrapolations being used here.

As it stands now there's not enough construction capacity. Santa Rosa burns in a wildfire and you can't get a contractor to stucco a wall in SF that summer, eh?

However, we could do it: "Prefab housing complex for UC Berkeley students goes up in four days" Aug., 2018 https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/08/02/prefab-housing-compl...

> This new 22-unit project from local developer Patrick Kennedy (Panoramic Interests) is the first in the nation to be constructed of prefabricated all-steel modular units made in China.

An interesting detail: "Kennedy notes that the cost of trucking to Berkeley from the port of Oakland was more expensive than the cost of shipping from Hong Kong."

So yeah, if we really had the political will we could build arcologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology

Of course, it's not just San Francisco, it's practically all cities in the Bay Area that strictly limit housing development but allow office construction.

Clearly it's years of policy at the state and local level that got us here. I've read big chunks of the Environmental Impact Report for the major downsize that happened in SF in the late 70s. That EIR specifically called out that the downzone would make SF much more expensive in the future if we didn't shift to redeveloping much of the industrialized parts of SF.

That redevelopment didn't really happen, and now we're left with this result.

The really unfortunate thing is because of the artificially restricted housing supply (and commercial, thanks Prop M) it ends up creating these perverse incentives. I would think that normally if you have an industry that's growing really well, and creating tons of high paying jobs, you'd want them in your city. But, because we combined a strictly limited supply with great growth in high paying jobs, the reaction is to be hostile to those high paying jobs.

Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, except to criticize them as being insufficiently charitable when it happens to be noticed. I think Benioff gets a pass not because he visibly cares, but because he's got that local boy made good story.

Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible. Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions.

I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome. The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different.

And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery? Will I be thanked and appreciated for my generosity and sacrifice, or just attacked for not giving more?

> Twitter and Zendesk and more have volunteering cultures and do their best to support the community. Nobody cares, ...

...because their "volunteering culture" comes off as too little too late.

It was insane for Twitter to open their HQ in the middle of SF's skid row.

Let me point out one aspect that seems lost on a lot of downtown techies: They see you. The bums and druggies and wastoids see the kids with wealth and success and not-fucked-up-ness of life and they resent it and them. Right or wrong, it's human nature. So yeah, Twitter was never about solving Civic Center's outdoor Bedlam, so they're never going to get credit for saving the world when they are squatting in hell clearly not saving shit. Eh?

> Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible.

Ask Rainbow Grocery. https://rainbow.coop/ No one blames them for anything.

> Anything that happens becomes your fault no matter how unrelated you are, even if it's fully self-inflicted. Like the tower, MUNIserable buses, or the housing shortage. Or SF General's billing practices, blamed on Zuckerberg after he gave... I don't even remember how many millions.

It's not impossible, but what you're talking about isn't "being a good neighbor" you're just complaining that people are blaming tech for their problems (whether it's true or not.)

(And don't get me started on Zuckerberg's gross purchased virtue signalling. He paid for a hospital, put his name on it so everyone would know, and now I can't talk shit about him and the problems his massive wealth and bewheemoth company are causing, because it makes me look like an ingrate!? Bullshit. Bull. Shit.)

> I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome.

Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"

Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming places in the whole of this planet of Earth.

> The best I can hope for is a grudging sufferance, so long as I hate myself enough for being the wrong kind of different.

Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are hanging out with the WRONG SFians. This is a city of love, not self-hate. (Insert off-color joke about Castro, gay culture, learning to overcome hate and self-hate to love yourself and others freely, etc. just as a reminder that this city has been so many things to so many people in it's brief and drama-filled life.)

> And why should I care about a community that refuses to grant me membership? Whose life will be improved by my misery?

Again, no one worth respecting wants you to be miserable or to hate yourself.

I don't know you or what you've personally experienced here, so I can't speak to that (I can't even figure out why most people don't like me.) If you came here since ~2001 you're already too late, the culture of welcoming was already thrashed by then. ("Dot-Com Boom", yeah?)

A lot of the community has been pushed out, and most of us who remain are wary of the new wave of techie folks, or yes, outright hostile.

> I've struggled to care about being kind to, and contributing to, a community that seems to not want me. There is, as far as I can tell, nothing I can do to gain welcome.

So go somewhere else? I don't mean that in a mean or disrespectful way. I'm a proponent of the idea that just moving somewhere else can be an excellent way to solve problems. It's not a panacea, of course, but it often does the trick.

Maybe you're not weird enough to hang with the old skool SF crowd. It's not a reflection on you. SF has long been the city of crazies. This whole tech-Mecca thing is hella recent. Less than a generation.

The old joke: "All the crazy people in America move to California, and all the crazy people in California move to SF. (And if you're too crazy for SF you move to Berkeley.)"

- - - -

Benioff gets a pass because he supported Proposition C.

https://abc7news.com/marc-benioff-salesforce-prop-c-homeless...

> It was insane for Twitter to open their HQ in the middle of SF's skid row.

I remember SF city government going out of their way to try to get actual businesses in there. Clearly Twitter made the egregious error of trying to play ball with the city government.

> Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"

Yes.

The answers ranged from "fuck you" to "sell all your stuff, give all your money to charity, give your job to a QTPOC, and leave". None of them included kindness, compassion, or being a decent human being. None of them actually allowed for the possibility of welcome.

> Okay if that's what you're getting from SFians you are hanging out with the WRONG SFians

I don't hang out with them if I can help it. I just meet the ones who lambast millions of dollars to charity as bad (when it's people they dislike) and characterize SF's xenophobic policies as love. Who obsess over SF's supposed weirdness while resenting people who don't conform to their expectations. Who make excuses for treating migrants with hostility, and expect them to understand as they refuse to return the favor.

I cut them out of my life as quickly as I can, because I have very little tolerance for that kind of hypocritical xenophobia.

The old skool SF types seem to like me. I've got a kind of weird they appreciate. The new skool, on the other hand...

----

But I'll play along. What can I do to gain a welcome?

> I remember SF city government going out of their way to try to get actual businesses in there. Clearly Twitter made the egregious error of trying to play ball with the city government.

Sure but SF gov and SF culture aren't co-extensive. A lot of us were not happy with what City Hall did to make that deal go through.

Also, it's not a case of wily city officials tricking Twitter is it?

>> Have you asked, "What can do to gain welcome?"

> Yes.

> The answers ranged from "fuck you" to "sell all your stuff, give all your money to charity, give your job to a QTPOC, and leave". None of them included kindness, compassion, or being a decent human being. None of them actually allowed for the possibility of welcome.

Well,

> "fuck you"

Let's discount that one right off, eh?

> "sell all your stuff, give all your money to charity, ...

That is actually good advice, or at least similar to what Jesus said. But a bit extreme if you're not feeling it.

> "...give your job to a QTPOC, and leave"

Hmm, well that's back in the "discount right off" bin, eh?

> None of them included kindness, compassion, or being a decent human being. None of them actually allowed for the possibility of welcome.

Well then, who the hell are these folks? It may be that you're just talking to loud mouths and freaks.

> I don't hang out with them if I can help it. I just meet the ones who lambast millions of dollars to charity as bad (when it's people they dislike) and characterize SF's xenophobic policies as love. Who obsess over SF's supposed weirdness while resenting people who don't conform to their expectations. Who make excuses for treating migrants with hostility, and expect them to understand as they refuse to return the favor.

Yeah, to me it sounds like you've gotten an earful from some of the louder and less hip freaks. Ignore them, they're loud and ineffectual.

I once had a Marxist roommate who tripped a circuit-breaker by trying to move an external electric socket to let a bookshelf be set flush with the wall. She went at a live circuit with a screwdriver! This person was over fifty yet didn't know enough about home electrical wiring not to stick a screwdriver in a live socket, but somehow felt that she knew how a city or country should be governed!?

So yeah, pick your friends wisely, there are a lot of losers here (because this is the town you move to if you can't make it in Cleveland or wherever.)

Remember that Burning Man started here as a fire-on-the-beach birthday celebration, eh?

> The old skool SF types seem to like me. I've got a kind of weird they appreciate. The new skool, on the other hand...

So you are sharing and understanding the problem?

----

> But I'll play along. What can I do to gain a welcome?

It's too late: you're already one of us. Welcome.

> Before ~2001 or so SF was one of the most welcoming places in the whole of this planet of Earth.

JWZ's struggles with San Francisco about the DNA Lounge were quite legendary and that was prior to 2001.

SF was welcoming as long as you were buying shitty property in a shitty area and helping to gentrify it. Anything else and they fought you tooth and nail.

The difference now is that all the shitty property is gone.

He took it over in 1999, so that's not much prior.

You're conflating SF Gov with SF culture.

Mayor London Breed didn't support Prop C, eh?

> Mayor London Breed didn't support Prop C, eh?

I guess Benioff represents SF culture, while Breed doesn't?

It's perhaps worth remembering that Benioff - who also bought his name on a hospital - got a pass well before Prop C came along.

> I guess Benioff represents SF culture, while Breed doesn't?

In re: Prop C, yes.

> It's perhaps worth remembering that Benioff - who also bought his name on a hospital -

Really? Which one?

Huh, so he did: https://www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/

Okay, I hate him now. (Just kidding. I will admit that I am not upset by this in the same way that Zuckerberg's thing makes me feel. FWIW, I'll examine that personally on my own time.)

> got a pass well before Prop C came along.

You mean he didn't suddenly become cool circa Prop C?

;-P

Well met Kalium.

I find it slightly ironic that in one post you're complaining that when it comes to supporting the community "nobody cares, except to criticize", then a post or two later a dude's gifted a load of money to a children's hospital and you describe that as "buying his name on a hospital"

I was deliberating mirroring my interlocutor's phrasing to make a point. One was resented, and used as a point against the person. The other passed unremarked.

As a rhetorical flourish, it did it was intended to do and exposed an apparent double standard.

> So go somewhere else?

A better solution is to simply stop caring about the opinions of the entrenched SF special interest groups and simply go on with one's life, and ignore the attacks that are never going to go away.

Those entrenched groups are getting less powerful by the day, anyway. Their opinions can't be change, and they aren't going to matter much soon.

And the other, newer, techie focused groups are getting more influence.

There isn't much point in "negotiating" with the entrenched groups when they are never going to be convinced, and you can just usurp them instead.

> Being a good neighbor in SF (or any other city in the inner Bay) is next to impossible.

I used to live in an area where a nuclear power plant was being built.

For them, it basically meant the corporation handing out $$$$ - doubtless budgeted for in advance - on things like building swimming pools in public schools, sponsoring local sports teams, and so on.

Here we go with the tech guilt/savior complex.

Tech people in SF have not been terrible neighbors. People who shit in the street are terrible neighbors. People who steal bikes and smash car windows are terrible neighbors. People who do drugs in the open and leave needles on the ground are terrible neighbors.

Techies are basically the ideal denizens of a city. Young, educated, well-paid, law-abiding people. You could hardly ask for a better group to populate a city.

If that were true, where do the terrible neighbours come from? Perhaps tech corporates may have something to do with the reasons these people are trying to survive on the street?

I wouldn't blame FAANG specifically, because of course the problem is more complex than that. But there's a certain complacency involved in being young, educated, and in-demand - which can be knocked out of you far more easily than you might think when the next bust happens and suddenly you are the one on the street being told you're a bad neighbour.

This is not hyperbole. It has happened in every dot com recession, and it will happen to people you know - possibly even to you - in the next one.

Benioff is mensch

If rent control was more of a thing, and people were more open to have more buildings, then a lot of locals and culture would have stayed. Instead, everybody's rent went up, people were forced to quit, or got offered great sums of money to sell their place. It was a forced exodus due to stupid laws, and with covid19 we're seeing another exodus of engineers. Who will remain?

I don't see how Salesforce Park avoids getting demonized. It's a nice park, but it's literally above it all, set up in a way so that homeless people can't really do much.

In San Francisco, aren't people going to object to this, eventually? Symbolism seems to be what people care about, and the symbolism of being above it all seems unavoidable.

If you go to a random park in Seattle, you'll see there are two types of parks - the ones where homeless people don't do much (yet?), and the ones where nobody else can do anything whatsoever. So I think that is a plus... saying "your park sucks because people cannot camp and do drugs in it" also sounds like lunacy to most people, so it's extra nice because you cannot make it sound like it's a bad thing, like some other exclusion policies that can be twisted and made into a strawman.

Out of curiosity, what are the mechanisms they use in Seattle or SF to keep that kind of activity at bay?

I am not sure, I think none at all. The parks I am aware of that are still usable are large and/or somewhat away from points of interest like services or density (e.g. Ravenna park that is large and surrounded mostly by burbs, where you only get yelled at by crazy people in one spot).

You'd think they couldn't make tech buses sound bad since they replace so many trips by car, but they managed.